You may have heard about the 10,000 Hour Rule when it comes to mastering a skill. There seems to be nothing magical about the actual number 10,000 when it comes to true expertise in an area, but 10,000 hours does a good job of conveying the commitment that it takes to become a high performer in your chosen area. There are 8,760 hours in a normal year, so even if you spent every single second of a year practicing, with no sleep, no eating, no bathroom breaks, and no time spent on anything else, you would still find yourself about 1,240 hours short of 10,000 hours. More realistically, if you could spend 5 hours per day on something, it would take you about 5 years and 6 months (without any rest days) to reach 10,000 hours and become an expert. This can put into perspective just how dedicated you have to be in an area to become an expert. Many of us don’t have that level of self control and dedication to put 10,000 hours into something so becoming an expert feels out of reach. 

You may think that you need to be an expert before you get into a real Self Defense Scenario, but your opponent is not likely an expert unless you are entering a fight with a ring and a ref. So learning to defend yourself actually probably won’t require the full 10,000 hours. It is your Instructor’s job to do the 10,000 hours and become an expert and then give you a distilled defense program. The truth is, the most basic strikes and moves are actually the most effective. So in your first few classes you will probably actually be shown the moves and tools that you will use in a self defense scenario. However, being shown the moves doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do them in a real scenario, you will actually need to truly learn the skills to be able to use them for real. The reason it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in an area is because you can’t learn a skill by just being shown it, you need to practice that skill over and over, you learn skills in Stages (3 stages actually). Fitts & Posner (1967) came up with a model of Learning that involved 3 Stages (Cognitive, Associative, and Autonomous), and a recent (2015) study by Tenison and Anderson tested this model in greater detail. 

Everyone starts in the Cognitive Stage of learning, this is where you have to think through each piece of the skill in order to do it. Even something as simple as throwing a kick or a punch, there are little details that your body doesn’t do right naturally when you are shown how to do them. When most students do a kick, they start to extend their leg too early and the kick doesn’t get the right power behind it. So you have to break a kick down into its steps, first you bring your knee up, then you extend your leg, next you bring your leg back with the knee still up, and finally you step down. Even after people practice this the first 100 times, you can still see that they are thinking about each step, and when they rush the steps the kick isn’t right. After students have practiced a move enough, they will move out of the Cognitive Stage and into the Associative Stage of Learning.

The Associative Stage can be the most frustrating Stage of Learning, because it takes the most practice to get through. In the Associative Stage, your brain is starting to “associate” the different steps of the move in your brain together and it’s making connections. Depending on the complexity of the move, it can often take hundreds and thousands of repetitions of the move for the steps to get fully smoothed out. I have heard different things from different instructors, one said it takes 3,000 reps to master a move, another says it takes 100 hours to master a move, either way that’s a lot of practice just to master a single move! Let’s say it was 100 hours to master a move, that would mean that an expert at something will have mastered 100 moves when they reach 10,000 hours which kinda makes sense. This phase is long and can be boring at times, so many people quit at this Stage of Learning and never quite master a move, they move on to another move or another activity altogether. The ones who stick with it and are able to move on to the Autonomous Stage of learning are the ones who are able to truly learn and master each move. Getting to the Autonomous Stage requires a bunch of practice, if you want to know how to do the most efficient practice possible check out our blog about the 85% rule: If You Can't Do It Slow, You Can't Do It Fast. 

Once you are in the Autonomous Stage of learning, you have mastered the move. You can do the move without thinking about each step (it is automatic), the move is smooth, and you notice immediately if the move was done incorrectly. Moves in Martial Arts require very precise timing and accuracy, even someone who has mastered a move may miss because the timing or accuracy was a bit off. If you attempt to do a move that isn’t in the Autonomous Stage, even against an unskilled opponent, the move will probably not be smooth enough to land. People usually overestimate their skills and think they are in the Autonomous Stage when they are still in the Associative Stage, this is where a test of that skill needs to happen at a fast pace. In Martial Arts that means sparring someone, and if you really want to see if you’ve got it, try sparring someone that is a higher rank than you and try to pull off your move. You will quickly see with a skilled opponent whether your move is smooth enough that you can hit that precise timing and accuracy window. The move should feel smooth, not like you had to suddenly increase your speed or power to do it, but like you are moving at the same sparring speed before, during, and after you do your move. So you’ve done this move against a skilled opponent, maybe even more than one, what now?

Martial Arts is a cumulative activity, meaning the skills build off of each other. Once you have mastered one move, your instructor probably won’t just move you on to another move that has no connection whatsoever to the move you just learned, they will say great now if you add this move onto that move you can create many more openings for yourself. This is why it is so important to reach the Autonomous Stage on a move, because now the move is your own so you can start to get creative with that move. Add other moves you have either before or after that move to create new combos that start to confuse and distract your opponent. More importantly you should learn new moves that are connected to the move you have just mastered, push yourself to learn more. You will have to start again at Step 1, the Cognitive Stage, where you have to think about each step of the move and the cycle repeats itself. But instead of feeling like you are at the bottom again, picture it like a staircase. You may be at the Cognitive Stage again, but you already mastered at least 1 move, you are not at the bottom of the staircase, you are in the middle. When you look up the stairs to the higher ranks you see you still have room to still learn and steps to climb, but you can look down the staircase and see the people lower ranks than you who are on those steps below you to see that you have grown. It is also important to understand, the step you are standing on is actually not on just 1 staircase, the skill that you are mastering may be a part of another move or may already be a combination of a few other skills that you mastered already. You can be in different Stages of Learning in multiple moves all at the same time, the staircases aren’t straight, they wind together and overlap each other. Your brain feels the most happy when it is climbing these metaphorical stairs, don’t stop climbing, the view gets better and better the higher you climb!

Although you don’t have to be an expert with 10,000 hours in the Martial Arts to defeat an unskilled opponent. You will at least need to practice some of the basic skills that you are shown in your first classes to the point where they are Autonomous. This could take 100 hours of practice or 3,000 reps in several different moves. Someone with several skills practiced to the point where they are done without thought will easily defeat someone with only moves that are on the Cognitive Stage. Punches and kicks only take fractions of a second to hit their target, you don’t have time to think about how to block or dodge that strike, and if you have to think about the steps of the move your brain will move too slowly to land any punches or kicks of your own. If you are really worried about defending yourself, you need to spend a couple hundred hours at a Martial Arts school practicing the basics. Come see what we have to offer here at Dojo Source, sign up for a Free Trial today at www.dojosource.fit/free-trial.